


Disjointed Custody

by HerenorThereNearnorFar



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Custody Arrangements, Gen, Good Moms Can Still Be Bitter As Hell, Let Hecuba Be Morally Ambiguous and Have Complicated Negative Feelings About Her Ex, Post-Divorce, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 20:26:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11974386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerenorThereNearnorFar/pseuds/HerenorThereNearnorFar
Summary: Everyone's got that one scummy ex. Hecuba Roughridge's just so happens to also be a multi-verse spanning hero, which makes despising him a little more complicated.Things were easier when he was just a deadbeat she could write off, when she didn't actually have todealwith him.





	Disjointed Custody

**Author's Note:**

> She's just so fascinating. Lady married an alien and had a kid with him and got informed via jellyfish several years after the fact, AND was still nice enough to let him take Mookie and Mavis on Xtreme Teen Adventures. Also I have no idea how to spell her name.

Custody handoffs happened in Neverwinter, usually in one parking lot or another. Since the day of Story and Song, Hecuba had been reluctant to let the kids go to the city without her. You never knew when the world was going to change in an instant. 

In between carts and coaches, awkwardness was kept to a minimum and she and Merle had to interact as little as possible, which… it was for the best. They’d spot each other over the cobblestones, and send the kids over. It was like the world’s most domestic hostage exchange. 

Today she’d known she would need to talk to Merle from the second she shuffled the kids out the door. She’d spent most of the ferry ride psyching herself up for it, and then psyching herself down again. You didn’t want to get too aggressive. They’d demonstrated long ago that they could play that game for months on end. 

Hecuba Roughridge’s ex walked over across the demilitarized zone of their divorce,  dodging carts that weren’t even close to hitting him. He looked confused, more so than usual. He looked a wee bit scared as well, which she took as a good sign. Some fear did a body good, and in this case, kept them both civil in front of the kids. Mavis was watching them with her clever hazel eyes, and even Mookie picked up on more than either of them realized. 

“Hey,” Merle said, trying to shove his hands in his pockets. The wooden one didn’t fit. “Firecracker, sweetheart,” Once Mookie would have run to hug him, but now he just beamed. More regular exposure to his father only somewhat lessened his enthusiasm at seeing him again. Mavis smiled shyly and shifted her backpack on her shoulders. “And uh, Hecuba, nice to see you. How come only Mavis has her bag?”

“Mookie starts school this week, remember?” Hecuba reminded him, already feeling her temper fraying. “My sister is going to take him down to Bottlenose Cove this weekend, so he’ll still get to spend so time with you.”

It was more than he deserved, in her frank opinion. He was a hero and from space and all that, but he’d still walked out on the kids. Their current split custody arrangement was mostly because he’d saved the world, apparently. They’d been switching off the kids bi-weekly all summer, but it wasn’t a tenable long term solution. 

Marthammor Duin Presbyterian was a good, dwarfish kindergarten. It was local. Most of Mookie’s friends were going there. It was a nice, normal choice, the choice she would have made under almost all other circumstances and therefore the choice she was determined to still make under these rather exceptional ones. 

Merle frowned. “Can’t he homeschool, like Mavis?” 

Hecuba looked pointedly at Mookie, who was playing in a dirty puddle, already straining to get away from the firm grip she had on his collar.  _ Mavis is her own teacher _ , Hecuba didn’t say.  _ She actually knows the meaning of the word responsibility, unlike some people _ . 

“He needs stability,” she told him instead. “I know this whole thing with your new business and the end of the world has been… chaotic. It’s not good for him. Unless you’re willing to build him a school, Mr. New Money, I think he needs to stay with me on the beach at least during the school year.”

For a horrible second, Merle actually seemed to be considering it, and Hecuba was  **scared** . 

His fortunes had changed since they’d first met. Then, Merle Highchurch had been a stranger plopped into town. He was new to the Coralheart clan, and dwarves, even relatively laidback beach dwarves, didn’t open up easily. Sure, people swore for him, but they did so with no small amount of confusion, like even they weren’t sure how he was related to them. The Rockseekers, the Lowbeards, they’d taken him in, but they’d done it grudgingly and they’d been happy to marry him off. 

Now he was a hero. Everyone knew his story, no one had really gotten an opt out option. He had his silly camp, spent weeks traipsing around in the woods teaching kids how to eat leaves and tackle each other. Just last month Lord Artemis Sterling himself had made him a earl, and now Merle spent his weekends supervising reconstruction down the coast. 

Mavis and Mookie adored him now, and some part of her was terrified that he’d take them away. A child’s love was a fickle thing and there were only so many hours in a day. In his new paternal spirit, Merle took so many of them. He might not have meant it, but as their marriage demonstrated, harm done with no ill intent could still leave damage for years. 

School was a handy excuse. It meant she could keep Mookie, at least, close by for a little longer. Mavis was easier to keep in contact with from a distance, but Mookie had a short attention span and limited object permanence. The idea of him forgetting her was the sort of stuff parental nightmares were made of. She didn’t deserve it, she hadn’t been the one to leave.

Merle nodded in a quiet sort of agreement, though probably not to Hecuba’s thoughts. “Yeah, I can see that. We, um, should probably hash out more of the details of how this is going to work over the school year though. And on that note,” he pulled a wrinkled piece of paper out of his pocket, “I think before we go our separate ways, we should have lunch. Together. As a family.”

Hecuba stared. Mookie asked, “Can I get dessert?”

“This piece of paper is actually only for pasta? At least, I think it is. Mavis, can you come over and read it, I lost my glasses again?”

While Mavis bent over the coupon, Hecuba dragged her ex to the side for a private chat.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Look, Lucretia suggested I see a therapist, who suggested we should spend more time all together. She said it might be good for the kids. Plus, we clearly need to really pin some of these scheduling details down.”

“I pin them down! You just forget them.”

“Oh, like you haven’t forgotten anything,” Merle’s tone turned acrid, “Who keeps sending the kids over without enough socks so you’ll “conveniently” have to drop off more?”   


“And you keep sending them back without any, so forgive me for having a shortage. Your reading glasses are on your head, for the record, Highchurch.”

“Mom, Dad?” Mavis’ always soft voice cut through their whispering match easily. The ever present background noise of Neverwinter was more of a hurdle, but she cleared it, just barely.    
  
“Yes, sweetie?” Hecuba said, even as Merle flourished some similar endearment. 

“I think we should have lunch. It would be good for both of you.” Her earnest, round face, was enough to make Hecuba relent. Merle wasn’t the only one who had a therapist, and it was possible that he was right. They needed to talk, at the very least. She just wished they could do it without the kids around so she could throw something at him. 

“Fine. Where’d your brother get off to?” She spotted him playing in a storm drain where the quiet lot turned into a less quiet road, and went to fetch him. When she came back, Mavis was handing Merle his glasses and laughing. 

“Come on,” Hecuba said, because someone had to be all business or this… family, wouldn’t get anywhere. “Where are we going?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


 

The restaurant was quiet at ten am, but it seemed surprisingly nice. There was no bar, you had to be seated at your tables, and the waiter kept giving them bread and warned them ahead of time that their pasta might take a while. By Merle standards, it was practically classy. 

Merle and Hecuba made awkward small talk about his camp and her pearl farm until Mavis and Mookie realized there was a battered claw machine by the bathrooms and ran off with way more small change than their parents should have given them. Hopefully it would keep them busy for a while. 

Hecuba’s shoulders untensed as she put the heavy burden of politeness down. She swirled her glass of beer (a cheap, knockoff dwarf brew) and sighed. “So, where’d you get the coupon for this dump?

Merle had the gall to take offense at that. “It’s not a coupon, it’s a pass. And it was given to me because I’m an  _ influencer _ .”

She scoffed, “Sure you are.”

The table wasn’t made for dwarves, the place clearly catered to humans and elves more often. The bread was light and fluffy, the salad pale, and the white tablecloth too high. Even the heightened chairs with the step in them didn’t make it any less awkward to be an extra few feet off the ground. 

“What’s wrong?” Merle demanded, “You were fine when you came to dinner with my friends.”

She hadn’t been, but it had been easier to pretend then. The adrenaline of the world being safe had’t yet worn off, and there had been an extra cushion of people between her and Merle. Strange people, yes, but people all the same. 

_ “He’s a bit of an odd bird,” Ramona Rockseeker had allowed when she’d been trying to marry Merle off, “But I’m sure you could make a husband of him. He’s got good blood and a good name.” _

Now the odd bird had found a flock just as strange as him. In the BoB, Merle seemed to thrive. Among his former crewmates, he was clearly loved. That didn’t mean much though, those people were weird. A solid percentage of them were aliens, for one thing. 

Her husband had been an alien. Was an alien. An extraterrestrial among them. 

He was waiting for an answer. Hecuba cleared her throat. “Your friends are tolerable. But us, Merle? There’s just too much bad blood there, you have to realize that.”

“I guess,” he shrugged, “Want a breadstick?’

She took one. It was an excuse not to talk. 

Face to face across a little table in a mid-priced family restaurant at mid-morning, there was nothing to do but watch him. It had been forever since they’d been close enough to look each other in the eyes. 

Despite all standard genetic laws, he had Mavis’ eyes. Dwarf families were fond of intermarriage, traits got passed around communities at large rather than families. He wasn’t from this world, but somehow he had family here- something to do with quantum and dimensions, the human man in the jeans had said- and that meant they probably shared at least a little blood somewhere along the line. They’d done a family tree seven generations back before they got married, to make sure they weren’t cousins somewhere too close. Half the people Merle had put on his hadn’t existed, and when she’d tried to think about it too hard her brain had gone fuzzy. They’d gotten that step of the preparations out of the way quickly. It made everyone’s heads hurt for reasons they couldn’t voice. 

They should have thought harder about it, Hecuba thought, biting savagely into her breadstick. Should have thought about why a stranger would turn up out of nowhere, talking about things that don’t make sense to anyone. Why’d he’d act so strange as well, and no one would think twice about it. 

From the beginning, he’d been odd. He’d been alien, she simply hadn’t had the eyes to see it. His accent was a little off, no one could quite place it, not even seasoned travellers who knew every dwarf enclave on the continent. He braided flowers in his beard. He laughed too quickly, at things that didn’t make sense, talked nonsense about pretend people and shows and foods no one had ever heard of. And his religion, ha! Pan wasn’t unheard of for dwarves, but she knew a fair number of pannites, knew they kept close ranks, and yet none of them had ever heard of a Highchurch or a Merle. 

He didn’t have a life story either, at least not one they could parse. It stopped and started, and was full of things that hadn’t happened, people his own family was certain didn’t exist. 

Once, early on, they’d gotten drunk together after putting Mavis to bed. They’d talked about their pasts, her first marriage, his family. For one shining moment, things had almost seemed to make sense. The next morning she’d woken up hungover and with a head full of fuzz in more ways than one. The details of Merle that hadn’t slipped away, she wrote down, and then she’d quietly made inquiries. The little village he said he’d grown up in, the Pan camp, the adventures he’d went on as a young person on the road. There was no evidence of any of it. 

She hadn’t given up on Merle Highchurch at that exact moment, but it hadn’t helped. 

Now, looking back, it was all so clear. He was an alien, lost and probably almost as confused as her. If he hadn’t been such an ass for the rest of their marriage, she’d almost be inclined to forgive him. As it was, she had been reluctantly forced to cut him some slack. 

Everyone knew. She’d married an alien, and everyone knew. Not everyone across the continent, not even everyone down the Sword Coast, but everyone in their sleepy beachside clan had some knowledge of deadbeat Merle Highchurch and when the Story and Song had come through, they’d put the pieces together. 

The best thing to do had been to embrace it. It had done wonders for business, at the least. 

If it weren’t for the kids, she would have been happy to leave it at that, “married an space dwarf, kicked him out the door, never looked back.” But she hadn’t just married him, she’d had Mookie, they’d raised Mavis, and that made all the difference. 

“Whatcha thinking about?” Merle asked softly, tapping his fingers against the table. 

“The kids,” Hecuba told him, because it was the closest thing to the truth she was willing to fess up to. 

“They’re good kids.”

“Yeah.”

They were, broadly speaking, good kids. Good kids with a father from space. Her beautiful, interdimensional babies. 

Even Mavis, who wasn’t Merle’s in the sense of blood, still laughed like him when she wasn’t afraid to; an odd, alien laugh. Hints of his accent lingered in her voice, he’d taught her how to talk and it showed. Sometimes the jokes she made were odd, indecipherable, about things that didn’t exist in the here and now, places not of this place. Their girl was a quick learner, and she’d learned too much, too young from someone who was never meant to be on their world at all. 

Mookie was a lost cause. He had his father’s nose which Hecuba swore wasn’t from any dwarf clans west of the Sea of Fallen Stars. Unlike his sister, he wasn’t a quick learner, but in recent months he had started picking up more and more of Merle’s habits. Sheer exposure had done what love could not. When Hecuba had caught him trying to cast Zone of Truth on their hermit crab, she’d given up. 

Merle kept introducing them to his friends as well, which wasn’t helping matters. Hecuba didn’t mind them individually- Davenport was quite polite and Lucretia had almost been too kind- but in any number larger than one they became overwhelming. It was as if they changed around each other, became more overwhelming and lost any sense of acceptable behavior. 

All seven of them together was a sight to behold. One by one, you could almost believe they were real, that they belonged here- Merle was pathetic but boring, Magnus was sturdy and dull, the elf Taako was a bit odd but ultimately harmless, Lucretia was competent but solid. Put in proximity to each other, however, it became impossible to reconcile them with any notion of earthliness. They  _ shifted _ , got more conspiratorial, twined around each other like siblings or lovers of many years. Conversations happened between words, words were incomprehensible. Every conversation they had was a tangle of obtuseness, century old references, and emotions so heavy they could be used to anchor a universe. 

At the party after the end of the world, Hecuba had watched Taako have a rousing shouting match with- or rather at- Lucretia, then collapse into her arms and start gossiping amiably five minutes later. Then a lich wearing flame red and actual flames had stolen them both away to slow dance. 

Together, there was no mistaking them for anything but people who had once lived among the stars, chased light and died a dozen deaths and loved deeper than mountain roots. They were sticky and badly dressed and swore so much Hecuba had to leave Mookie outside in the hall, but once, their eyes suggested, they had thought they might be eternal and that left marks. 

It was the sort of trait you wanted in heroes from far away, not in someone you were leaving your children with two weeks a month. 

Merle didn’t look very heroic or space-like, picking crumbs out of the bread basket. Finally he gave up and looked back at Hecuba. 

“You’ve been staring at me for ages,” he said, “So we should probably talk about this custody thing. Mookie has to go to school, I know. He’s… he’s just a kid. And you want them both near you, I know that too. I know I don’t deserve as much time as you’ve given me, but I just want to be a good dad. Give them the best opportunities possible. Mavis is… she’s thriving out there, working with the campers. She’s smart, everyone looks up to her, she’s got real leadership potential. Her woodscraft is coming along excellently as well. I think it’s good for Mookie too. It lets him let off steam.”

“You’re taking our kids out into the middle of the woods, to do Gods know what,” Hecuba pointed out, “And you almost never answer your Stone. I get worried, I think anyone under the circumstances would. And you’re right, you don’t deserve what I’ve given you.” She was out of beer. She crossed her arms instead or taking a menacing drink. Sometimes you had to improvise. 

“When I told you we were going to Goldcliff to meet Sloane and Hurley you told me you didn’t want to hear it.” She hadn’t. They were probably good people (dryads) but they were too tied up with memories of that horrible day and losing Mavis. She was thankful, yes, but it was hard not to fixate on all the ways it could have gone wrong. Besides, they drove fast cars and apparently one of them had a criminal record. At the very least that sort of thing ought to have waited until their children were old enough to see over a steering wheel. 

“Plus, you can always call Mavis,” Merle added calmly, and she marveled at how he had changed. Something had clicked into place deep inside of him, making him into someone with patience, someone with morals. She wanted to be thankful for it, it was good for the kids. Instead she was just irrationally resentful. “But you’re right. I’ll try to keep in contact better.” He hesitated, “Bottlenose Cove is coming along well. I- I’ll have a house and everything there. Real fancy place. Should be good, for the kids, that is. Especially this winter.”

“You want them this winter?” Hecuba asked. It was mild, especially down south, by Merle’s new homebase. If he had a house, there was no reason not to let Mavis and Mookie go, except the biggest and most basic one; she didn’t want them to. She ground her teeth. “I suppose we could work out some sort of schedule over the holidays.”

Merle persisted, “Everyone is going to Candlenights at the Bee-oh-bee too. You could come, if you wanted to. I know you probably don’t want to be away from them during the holidays.”

She checked that the kids were still out of sight before she snapped at him. “Just shut up for a second, why don’t you! Stop being the reasonable one, Merle. It’s too late for that. You can’t waltz in here after everything is over and done and years down the line and pretend you’ve changed. It doesn’t fool me. It might fool the kids, but not me. We’re going to my family for the holidays and you know that.”   


An unsteady quiet ruled over their table. 

Merle, gods damn him, tried to apologize. “Look, I know I was a terrible husband, and I’m sorry. I just, I want to make things right and I don’t know how. I communicate too much, I communicate too little. I don’t spend enough time with the kids, I spend too much time with them. Just… tell me what you want, Hecuba. 

Her fists balled and she found herself clutching instinctively at her heavy pearl bracelet. “I don’t know! I want you to have been a better husband. I want to not have to hate your guts.”

“‘Cept we hated each other when we were married,” he reminded her helpfully. 

“Yeah,” she grudgingly allowed, “‘Cept for that. Just let me be mad at you for a while longer, Merle. I think I’m owed it, and after your heroism got beamed into everyone’s brains, no one else is going to listen to me complain about your smelly feet.” Even her own brain was putting up a fight, stories of a century lost and lives sacrificed pounding at her skull. 

Merle Highchurch had died half a hundred times, fighting a force beyond anyone’s comprehension, had made deals with demons in suits, raised churches, saved lives. Merle Highchurch had walked out on her without a word of warning. Those things ought to have been mutually exclusive and they weren’t. It wasn’t fair. 

“I have a fungal condition,” Merle said, “But yeah, point taken. You despise me. I get that. I sucked for a while there,” she rolled her eyes, disgusted at the past tense, “Our kids don’t have anything to do with that though. We’ve got to do what’s right for them. If that means getting a house, or having lunch with you, or getting Mookie a tutor so he can come stay with me, I’ll do that. They’re good kids.”

“They’re good kids,” Hecuba agreed. “And I think we could work something out for Candlenights, provided you agree to never let Mookie and the big man with the dogs be the same room alone together. He means well but he's entirely too enthusiastic.”

Merle nodded instantly, “Done.”

“And I guess you can bring your horde of hooligans down to the beach on weekdays when Mookie’s in school to visit him.” It was a big concession. She’d put a lot of work into getting her town and clan to forget she’d had anything to do with a Merle Highchurch, extraplanar being, and this would ruin it. People made sacrifices for their kids, though. It was what parents did. 

“That’s very kind of you,” Merle said. “Maybe you can introduce me to your boyfriend. What was his name, Glenn?”

Recalculating her way out of that conversation change took a second, and barely left Hecuba time to get mad. “Who, Glymeth? Oh, no, we broke up. I’m doing singles events now.”

“In that dump? I didn’t think they had such a thing.”

She tried to intimidate him into shutting up, with no success. Merle Highchurch was untouchable and oblivious. “Fine,” she said, eventually. “I’m hosting singles night. And book club.” It had been trouble to set up, but she enjoyed it. It gave her days structure. It made her something exceptional on her own, even if it was only in the small world of her clan and her town. 

“Sounds nice.”

“Hmmph.”

The silence wasn’t quite so bad this time and after a few minutes Mookie and Mavis came back over. 

“How was the claw machine?” Merle inquired, with the wide, plastered on grin of a father trying his best. “Did you win anything?”   


“No!”” Mookie said happily and went back to chewing on something he hadn't had when he'd left. Hecuba carefully retrieved it from him and discovered it was gum of unknown origin. After some thought, she put it back under the table, to entertain future Mookies. She wiped her hand on the tablecloth. 

Mavis smiled, “The waiter came by and said they stole it from this rival restaurant next door when it got destroyed during the attacks. Isn’t that cool?”

“Yes?” Hecuba ventured. Merle nodded gravely. “Very interesting, darling. Illegal, but interesting. We might be able to blackmail our way into a free dessert after all.”

“Mavis wouldn’t let us come back to the table until you were done fighting,” Mookie informed them like someone imparting state secrets. His sister blushed. 

“I didn’t mean-” she began. Hecuba reached across the table to take her hand. 

“Honey, you didn’t have to do that. Your father and I have some bad blood, we’ll admit, but we love you. We weren’t fighting, we were mostly talking about how to get you all around this year.” It wasn’t too much of a lie, because Mavis was smart enough to know when she was blatantly being lied to.   
  
“We love you,” Merle said, “Zone of Truth promise.”

Mavis nodded, a little uncertainly, but some tension in her sturdy little frame relaxed. Her beard was coming in well, and it was even more noticeable when she let herself smile. 

“Food’s here!”

For them, she could do this. Uncomfortable chairs, overpriced pasta and her ex, all dimmed next to their arguably-happy faces. 

They were _such_ good kids, extraterrestrial bits and all.


End file.
